WD Red Idle3 bug increasing load cycles

E

evilsofa

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Interesting thread, in which it appears that some 3TB and 4TB WD Red drives are shipping with the wrong idle3 timer setting, which causes them to spin down every 8 seconds, which increases the load/unload cycles dramatically, potentially causing them to fail well before warranty:

http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=73417

Check your SMART values! The thread discusses ways that you can set idle3 to the proper setting yourself. Idle3 is supposed to be completely disabled.

Some specifics: for the 3TB Red drives, WD30EFRX-68AX9N0 doesn't have the bug, while WD30EFRX-68EUZN0 does have the bug. All 4TB Red drives have the bug.

Edit #2: And yet more info:

http://community.wd.com/t5/Desktop-...imer-Set-to-8-Seconds-High-LCC-in/td-p/648821

There appears to be a page for a firmware update dated 1/21/2014 to fix the bug here, but click the link and you go to a page with only a link to True Image. Eh?
 
Last edited:
evilsofa said:
Edit #2: And yet more info:

http://community.wd.com/t5/Desktop-...imer-Set-to-8-Seconds-High-LCC-in/td-p/648821

There appears to be a page for a firmware update dated 1/21/2014 to fix the bug here, but click the link and you go to a page with only a link to True Image. Eh?
Click to expand...

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=619&sid=201&lang=en
Page is a bit buggy for me. Some times it loads, other times it just shows the True Image link.

There are 3 downloads. 1 for windows x86/x64 and 2 for linux.

WD Red SMART load/Unload utility

Version:
Publish Date: 12/20/2013


Important! If a pop-up blocker is installed, you may need to disable it in order to download the software.
Description

This utility modifies the behavior of the drive to wait longer before positioning the heads in their park position and turning off unnecessary electronics. This utility is designed to upgrade the following hard drives: WD RED

CAUTION: Do not attempt to run this software on any hard drives other than what is listed above. Please make sure that the computer system is not turned off during the firmware upgrade. Doing so may damage the hard drive beyond repair and your data may be lost.

Supported Operating Systems

Windows x86
Windows x64
Linux x32
Linux x64

Instructions

Important: Please ensure that any important data is backed up from the hard drive and that the drive is removed from the RAID array (the array is offline) before updating the firmware.
Download the WD5741utility update.
Extract the file and place in a known location Windows:
Open a command line window.
From the command line, navigate to the directory containing the utilities.
Execute wd5741 -? <-- this will type out some terse usage instructions.
Execute wd5741 -d? <-- this will type out a list of drives.
Execute wd5741 -d# <-- this will update drive with same # in previous list.
Execute wd5741 -dall <-- this will attempt to update all listed drives.

Linux:
Open a terminal window.
From the command line, navigate to the directory containing the utilities.
Execute sudo ./wd5741x## -? <-- (## = 32 or 64) terse usage instructions. (the above command will prompt for an administrator password)
Execute sudo ./wd5741x## -d? <-- list of drives. (subsequent sudo command will not prompt for password, it remembers)
Execute sudo ./wd5741x## -d# <-- update drive #.
Execute sudo ./wd5741x## -dall <-- update all drives.

Note: sudo refers to superuser/root access.

Critical: Please make sure that the computer system is not turned off during the firmware upgrade. Doing so may damage the hard drive beyond repair and your data may be lost.
Once completed, a message will be displayed that the firmware has been updated.

Note: If you are having issues updating the firmware of a drive connected to a PCI Serial ATA controller or Serial ATA RAID controller, please install the drive into a system with Serial ATA connections directly on the motherboard (Onboard Serial ATA controller) and try again.

Files available for download

wd5741.exe (x86 and x64)
http://download.wdc.com/sata/wd5741.exe

wd5741x32
http://download.wdc.com/sata/wd5741x32?v=1814

wd5741x64
http://download.wdc.com/sata/wd5741x64?v=1814

Related Resources
Disclaimer of Liability - As-Is.txt
Click to expand...
 
evilsofa said:
Interesting thread, in which it appears that some 3TB and 4TB WD Red drives are shipping with the wrong idle3 timer setting, which causes them to spin down every 8 seconds, which increases the load/unload cycles dramatically, potentially causing them to fail well before warranty:
Click to expand...

Thanks for the heads up, just bought a 3TB Red from TD.
 
I did see a comment somewhere (can't find it now) that if you're using a Synology NAS, it disables the idle3 timer for you if it is not disabled.
 
I strangely don't seem to have this issue.

I have a mixture of the A and E red drives. And the 193 smart attribute is 0 on all of my disks. All other smart attributes are within a 2% tollerance of the disks between the A and E's.

Maybe I just never let my system rest for 8seconds though.
 
Yeah, that's right.

In the 900 hours my drive was on I had seen one load cycle per about 4 minutes. After disabling it I only saw a handful of load cycles all week now.
 
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